


Riptide

by petit_moineau



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Comfort, Demons, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Hallucinations, Pining, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6500830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petit_moineau/pseuds/petit_moineau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex can ascribe a lot of things to poor sleep, but sobbing on her kitchen floor over a broken jar of jam in front of Strand is a new low.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riptide

**Author's Note:**

> Started out based on the [established relationship aus](http://kenaiskoda.tumblr.com/post/119898437912/established-relationship-aus) prompt "you found me crying on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night surrounded by a shattered jelly jar." Turned into 3100 words of probably unrealistic fluff.

The knock at the door startled Alex to the point that she flinched away instinctively.  Her suspension-cum-sabbatical had been nearly silent.  Her passcodes for work had been changed, so she couldn’t get into the PNWS server.  Nic hadn’t been answering her texts.  She assumed he was angry with her, though not angry enough to actually cut out the eavesdropped footage from the finished podcast, she noted cynically.  Amalia had just vanished.  And Strand—well.

Someone knocked again.

God, what if it was Strand?

She ignored the mirror in the hallway, but she could still see the shadows out of the corner of her eye.  They were always close behind her these days.  She knew it was ridiculous to feel so worked up, but sleep deprivation had a way of making her highly emotional.  With a deep breath and a good shake-out of her arms as if she were about to do something with a high probability of cramping, she opened the door.

Strand stood in front of her in faded jeans, a gray t-shirt, and a red plaid flannel shirt, and he’d let his facial hair grow a bit.  She felt ridiculous as she looked at him; she’d seen him almost exclusively in well-tailored suits for a year, so it just wasn’t fair for her to find him equally attractive in his best impersonation of an ageing hipster.  She tried to search his eyes, so intensely blue that in her sleepless state, it almost hurt to look into them too long, but as usual, they betrayed nothing.

“Alex.”  His voice called her back to the present.  “May I come in?”

She shook herself.  “Yeah, of course.”  She stepped out of the way for him and gestured vaguely to her living room.  “Make yourself comfortable.”  He didn’t _look_ angry, and she’d been the witness of Strand’s fury on more than one occasion, but falling back on social convention meant delaying whatever he wanted to talk about.  “Do you want something to drink?”  She moved toward the open kitchen regardless of his answer.  The shadows in the corner leered at her.

“No…no, thank you.”  The sight of a casually dressed Strand trying to fit himself onto her sofa while maintaining minimal contact with it was kind of hilarious, but she felt like she’d forgotten how to move the muscles in her face to make a smile.  “We need to talk.”  Alex pressed her lips together tightly in what she thought might be a smile, her heart hammering in her chest.  She wanted to stay in the kitchen, safely behind the open bar.  Her feet moved her toward the other end of the sofa anyway.  Strand watched her, his mouth just barely creased into a frown.  “I should have called first; I apologize.”

“I’m not going to go to pieces,” Alex snapped, suddenly irritated without knowing why.

Strand blinked in surprise, and she was pleased to see she’d rattled him.  He recovered quickly, and she lingered on how much she loved to make him lose control, even if it was anger—she just liked to see how far she could push, what she could push, that would break that perfect calm.  “Of course not,” he said reassuringly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, chagrined.  “I just...”

“Haven’t been sleeping,” he finished, frown deepening.

She laughed weakly.  “I guess it’s enough to make anyone cranky.”

Strand made a humming noise in his throat, a sound that Alex privately called Strandish in her head, like it was his own language.  Then he looked at her, all business.  “Alex, you eavesdropped on me.  Then you put it in your podcast.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek.  “Yes,” she agreed, admitting for once that she deliberately did something he told her not to do, immediately after he told her to do it.

Strand seemed to be struggling with what to say, which wasn’t a new phenomenon.  “I’ve been angry.”

“I figured you would be.”

“Why did you…?”

She sighed and reached for the phone on the table in front of her, scrolling through pictures until she found the one she was looking for.  She showed Strand a picture of her own wrist, with small crescent welts cut into the skin.  They were of an angle that she couldn’t have made herself.  “See my wrist?  That’s from a couple of weeks ago.  Before we went to the studio, Amalia begged me to record the conversation.”

Strand’s frowned deepened.  “What for?”

Alex shook her head.  “She wouldn’t say.  But she seemed…almost desperate.  Not scared-desperate, but…really intense.  That’s what struck me.  Amalia isn’t usually an intense person.  Not in this way.  I feel like…” Alex paused, knowing that what she was about to say sounded like paranoia, even to her ears.  “I feel like she was using the recording to set a trap for someone.”

“The striking blonde woman.”

Alex’s eyebrows went up, surprised that he was taking her seriously.  “Yeah.  Normally I wouldn’t—“  She was cut off by the sound of her own stomach growling.  As if brought on by the reminder, she suddenly felt so hungry that she felt sort of nauseated.

Strand’s gaze was one of fond exasperation.  “You’re always pestering me about my eating habits.  When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t…I don’t know,” she admitted sheepishly.  “Please don’t make me go out.  I look terrible.  I’ll make a sandwich or something.”

Strand made one of his noises.  “We could order take-out.  More filling.  I haven’t eaten, either.”

She nodded.  “Yeah, okay, if you like Thai food, there’s a really good place that’s not too far.  I think I’ll still make a sandwich while we wait.”

She got the menu out of the drawer in her kitchen dedicated to odds-and-ends and passed it to him.  Laying two pieces of bread out on a plate, she slapped a bit of butter on one piece and reached for a jar of jam in the fridge.  “See anything you like?” she asked Strand over her shoulder, but the sight made her pause.

Strand seemed completely oblivious to the grinning, razor-teethed shadow perched on the back of the sofa, leaning so close that if it had breath, Strand would be able to feel it on his cheek.  Alex froze, too startled to cry out.  She felt a sensation like holding her head underwater—the world became muffled, like she was looking through fog, or a curved tunnel.  She saw Strand’s mouth moving.  She saw the shadow curled around Strand like a lover.  She saw all these things as if they happened several seconds ago and she had only just processed them, and she could hear no sound.  Strand seemed to make to get up.  _Don’t move_ , she wanted to shout, but her throat—her body—felt paralyzed, like major nerves necessary for basic motion were missing.

“—lex?  Alex?”  Strand’s voice was clearer now.  She blinked.  The shadow had dissipated.  She jerked in surprise to find Strand right in front of her—when did he get there?

The jar of jam fell from her grip and shattered on the tile floor.

The sound nearly made her jump out of her skin.  She stared at the sickly red pooling on the floor, caught on the shards of glass like viscera.  She looked up at Strand and opened her mouth to say “well, that was silly of me.”  Instead, and to her ever-lasting horror, she burst into tears.  The suddenness of it took her strength and she sank to her knees next to the puddle of crab apple jam.  She babbled incessantly, incoherently.  “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me—it’s just jam, it’s not like it hurt the floor—I’m _sorry_ , I can’t stop—“

Strand knelt in front of her, his arms tentatively wrapping around her, like he remembered hugging as a theoretical principle but not its practical applications.  Shocked, she latched on and cried a little harder, though with great control she managed to do it mostly silently, not wanting to feel even more pathetic than she already did.  With shuddering breaths, though the gentle circles Strand’s hand made on her back helped, she calmed herself.  It felt, as it always did when she broke down in that way, that hours had passed, though she still had some feeling in her knees.  She reflected with some embarrassed self-awareness that Strand smelled nice, like mint leaves and some kind of musky deodorant or cologne.  Strand’s grip on her had tightened, as if his muscles had gradually come to life, and she didn’t want to pull herself out of it.  She hated herself a little for it, but she really did feel safer with him around.  She hated herself a lot for it, but she knew from experience that she flushed bright red whenever her eyes so much as watered, and she didn’t want him to see her like that.

He pulled away, but didn’t let go entirely.  “Alex.” 

She shivered a little.  They’d come a long way, but she’d never heard him say her name like that, and it did things to her that she wasn’t ready to confront.  She didn’t even know how to describe how he said it without sounding badly clichéd or possibly completely incorrect.  “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said firmly.  He pulled her to her feet and steered her toward the sofa.  “Sit down.  I’ll clean up.”

“Don’t be silly,” she croaked, “it’s my mess,” but Strand continued like he hadn’t heard her.  She made herself useful and called in their take-out order, clutching the phone tightly to control the tremor in her hands.  She didn’t process the sound of him clinking around in the kitchen, choosing instead to queue up something on Netflix, anything to occupy herself from the shadows she was afraid she’d see in the corner.  

He sat next to her, much closer than he had been previously, and pressed a mug of tea into her hands.  “Drink this, you’ll feel better.”

She sniffed at it.  It was pale green and floral.  “What is it?”

“Lavender.”

She looked over at him, knowing for a fact that wasn’t one of the teas she kept in her pantry, mostly for his benefit.  “Richard.  Do you keep tea in your pockets or something?”

His familiar wry smile perked up his face.  “Perhaps.”

A faint, soft smile curved her lips.  “Thank you.”  She settled back into the sofa. The tea was a little strange, but she liked it well enough.  “I wish I’d never…” She paused, correcting herself.  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Stop apologizing, please,” Strand said with a hint of exasperation.

“No, not for…my weird crying episode,” she clarified.  “For the podcast.  For dragging you into this.”  She sighed.  “When I first met you I never expected to actually like you.”  He gave one of his harsh exhales of laughter at that, and she felt a flush creep into her cheeks when she realized how shitty that sounded.  “Sorry.  What I meant was…I never expected you to stay involved.  I thought…I don’t know, I thought it would be more like _Serial_ , where I profiled you but you had pretty minimal involvement.  So I never thought about how it would…you know.  Affect you.  To be talking about your family.”  She couldn’t look him in the eyes, though she sorely wanted to.  Only the blind would fail to see how deeply the show had affected Strand lately.  His clothes hung just a bit too loose, his eyes were just a bit too tired, his hair was just a bit too long—and a lock of it fell over his forehead now.  She found it absolutely, unexpectedly charming.

But Strand just gave that same wry smile.  “Please don’t think that you actually dragged me anywhere I didn’t already want to go,” he said, his voice low and dry.

She rolled her eyes.  The motion hurt her exhausted eyes, but she couldn’t help it.  “God, you are so…so… _Strandlike._ ”

He gave a real laugh at that, and even she joined in with a tired grin.  He seldom laughed, but she loved when he did.  He insisted on paying for the take-out, but drew the line at her choice of Netflix.  “Alex, _no._   We are _not_ watching ghost-hunting shows.”

“Oh, come on,” she teased, “you know they’re not real.”

“That’s why we’re not watching them.  They’ll raise my blood pressure.”  She fought the urge to remark on his uncanny ability to sound like a cranky old man when it suited him, when he added, “besides, don’t you get enough of ghosts when you’re at work?”

That sobered her up a bit, and she laughed weakly.  “I guess it _would_ be bad for my sleep, huh?”

He regarded her coolly, but not without compassion.  “You’re still not sleeping.”  It wasn’t a question.

She shook her head.  “Not much.  And I’m doing everything the doctor said, to the letter.”

“Is it Amalia?”

“No, she was barely even here, and then one day I came home and she was just gone.  I don’t know where she went.  She’s been so shady since she got back, but I figure she has her reasons.”  She sighed.  “I guess it’s…well, you know about me chanting in my sleep, right?  I guess I’m subconsciously afraid of letting myself sleep deeply.  It hasn’t happened again, and I know that it was the same day that I went to that bookseller’s house and she was obsessed with trying to get me to say demons’ names out loud, but it still _really_ creeped me out, I wish Nic hadn’t looked into the audio files, and _please_ don’t say it was apophenia,” she finished with a warning.

He held up his hands in the universal gesture for peace.  “Alright, I won’t,” he said calmly.  “So what if you don’t do what the doctor says?  What if you ignore her for an evening?  I think that too much of a process around sleep could make it into a source of anxiety.  All these things she’s wanting to you to…all these things for you to remember…makes sleep seem like it’s something that requires concentration.”

She frowned.  “What are you suggesting?”

Strand paused, like he hadn’t actually thought about it.  He ran his hand through his hair in a failed attempt to sweep that thick, dark lock from his forehead, but it fell right back into place.  At last he nodded to himself.  “We eat our take-out.  We watch bad television that doesn’t include ghost shows, creepy crime dramas, or other things that could be nightmare-inducing.  You fall asleep on the couch.  I stay with you.  We thereby prove that you can get through a night of sleep and that, through the testament of one who is a light sleeper, there was no chanting involved.”

“Whoa,” she held up a hand of her own, “you can’t do that.”

“Why not?” he challenged.

“It’s too much,” she protested over her own beating heart.

“I won’t force you.  But you always put others—put me—above yourself.  You should let someone look after you for a change, _not_ because I think you need it,” he added hastily, sensing her bristling, “but because…because I want to.”

She was flummoxed and more than a little flattered.  “I…I don’t know what to say.”

“Say thank you,” he teased.

She covered his hand with hers.  It looked like a doll’s in comparison.  “Thank you,” she said, with all the sincerity she had.  He took her hand; his was warm to the touch and rougher than she would have thought.  She was hardly an unbiased observer, but the look in his eyes seemed…soft.  Fond, even.  Was he actually _fond_ of her?  She knew that he liked her well enough, or at least tolerated her, but _fond_ seemed too close to _affectionate_ , and she was sure he wasn’t that, not when he was on the hunt for what happened to his wife, and certainly not when she felt…whatever she felt for him.  It wasn’t breaking ethics or journalistic rules as long as he neither knew nor reciprocated.  Though could she really pretend that she cared about journalistic ethics when she’d recorded people against their consent on more than one occasion?

Strand’s other hand hesitantly brushed the side of her face, pushing back a thick curl that had fallen in her eyes.  She froze, barely daring to breathe, wanting to lean into his hand with a desperation that embarrassed her, but she willed herself to keep still except for the flush she knew was pooling in her cheeks.

Strand’s hand snapped back suddenly and he cleared his throat.  She shook herself out of her gaze, grateful that her oversized shirt disguised her pounding heart.  With the spell broken, he commandeered her remote and they bickered until they found one of the few things they both agreed on—an astronomy documentary series that she picked because she liked it, he picked because he admitted with some embarrassment that his knowledge of astronomy was pretty minimal. 

Alex found herself leaning into him.  She could pretend it was because she was sitting more or less in the middle of the sofa and he was against an end.  She could pretend that the arm that tentatively came to rest around her shoulders was because Strand was being uncharacteristically kind, and he was probably more than a little concerned that she was one broken object away from a full breakdown.  She relished it more than she should, but he was warm, his touch was gentle, and her head was over his chest, which, she discovered, was a pretty prime place for it to be when he spoke.  That incredible, ridiculous voice of his, which secretly and inwardly made her feel some kind of way when she was up late editing, reverberated under her ear, deeper and louder than normal, and she knew she had to be really fucking tired if she was ascribing various characteristics or feelings to Strand’s voice.  She let her eyes slip closed.

She must have dozed off, because she was barely aware of Strand easing her into a horizontal position and pulling a blanket over her.  “You should go home,” she insisted, and she was sure she wasn’t slurring her words—much.

“Go to sleep, Alex,” Strand said quietly, and she imagined she heard a hint of a smile in his voice.

For once, there were no shadows in the corners.

For once, she did what he said.

**Author's Note:**

> Alex totally wanted to watch Ghost Asylum, which, if you haven't seen it, is my personal favorite of the ghost shows, a) because they're from my state, b) because they have the most ridiculous accents, and c) because they try to build really intricate traps for the ghosts. They're totally watching Through the Wormhole, because Morgan Freeman's voice is soothing as hell. And I keep tea in the pockets of my cardigans. I like to imagine that Strand would do something similar.


End file.
